Baker's Ammonia substitute

Best substitute

Baking powder

Use the same amount by volume; 1 tsp baker's ammonia becomes 1 tsp baking powder as the baker's ammonia you are replacing

Best for Spekulatius and thin spiced cookies

Different texture

For most recipes, replace it with an equal volume of baking powder and accept a slightly softer, less snappy cookie. If your recipe is a honey Lebkuchen or another dough that already contains something acidic such as honey, molasses, brown sugar, cocoa or sour cream, use half as much baking soda instead and you will get closer on both spread and colour. What you cannot fully replace is the reason the ingredient exists: baker's ammonia turns completely into gas and escapes, so it leaves behind a dry, porous, brittle crumb and no salty aftertaste, which is precisely the snap of a thin Spekulatius or a properly crisp Springerle. Baking powder and baking soda both leave mineral salts behind, so the cookie ends up a shade softer and more cake-like. Use these swaps only in thin, dry bakes; in a thick or moist dough they are actually the safer choice, because baker's ammonia can leave an ammonia smell trapped in a soft crumb.

Other baker's ammonia substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Baking soda, in a dough that already contains acid
Different taste
Use half as much: 1 tsp baker's ammonia becomes ½ tsp baking soda
Pure alkali, which needs an acid in the dough to release its gas.
What changes
Best for
honey Lebkuchen and Pfefferkuchen, molasses and treacle cookies, gingerbread and Braune Kuchen, cocoa-containing doughs, recipes with sour cream, buttermilk or fruit juice
Prep. Dissolve it in a teaspoon of the recipe's liquid so it disperses evenly and does not leave bitter pockets.
This is the better choice than baking powder whenever the recipe already has something sour in it, which in German Christmas baking it very often does, because honey, molasses, dark brown sugar and cocoa are all mildly acidic. Baking soda gives you the wide, generous spread that baker's ammonia gives, and because it leaves the dough alkaline it browns hard, which is exactly the deep mahogany colour a good Lebkuchen wants. The risks are specific. Too much tastes soapy and faintly metallic, so measure carefully and start with half the volume of the ammonia called for. And in a pale dough with no acid at all, such as a plain Springerle, baking soda has nothing to react with, so it will simply sit there tasting bitter. Reserve it for dark, sweet, spiced doughs.
3Potash (Pottasche, potassium carbonate)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume, dissolved in a little water first
The other traditional German leavener, sold beside hartshorn in German supermarkets at Christmas.
What changes
Best for
honey Lebkuchen, Pfefferkuchen and Printen, Elisenlebkuchen, traditional recipes that already call for both potash and hartshorn
Prep. Dissolve in a teaspoon or two of cold water and stir into the wet ingredients.
If you are baking from a German recipe, this is the ingredient most likely to be sitting right next to the hartshorn on the shelf, and traditional Lebkuchen recipes often use both because they do different jobs: potash gives lift and deep browning, hartshorn gives spread and crispness. Used alone in place of hartshorn, potash browns beautifully and lifts well, but it leaves potassium salts in the crumb, so the cookie is softer and slightly chewy rather than brittle, and it can taste faintly soapy and mineral if you overdo it. It also needs an acidic dough to work properly, so it belongs in honey and molasses doughs and not in pale ones. Always dissolve it in a spoonful of water before mixing it in; added dry it clumps and leaves bitter spots.
4Baking powder plus a pinch of baking soda
Close match
1 tsp baker's ammonia becomes ¾ tsp baking powder plus ⅛ tsp baking soda
A hybrid that borrows spread and browning from the soda and reliability from the powder.
What changes
Best for
thin Spekulatius, spiced Christmas cookies, cut-out cookies that should stay flat, Lebkuchen
Prep. Sift both with the flour; do not increase the soda hoping for more browning.
This is the most useful compromise for anyone who wants the cookie to look right as well as taste right. The small amount of baking soda pushes the dough slightly alkaline, which encourages both the spread and the browning that baker's ammonia produces, while the baking powder guarantees enough lift so nothing comes out dense. Expect a cookie that is very close in appearance and about ninety per cent of the way there on snap. The remaining difference is unavoidable: the residues left behind keep it very slightly softer, and it will not stay crisp for as many weeks in the tin.
5Leave the leavener out entirely
Different texture
Omit; make no substitution
No chemical leavening at all, relying on beaten egg and long drying for structure.
What changes
Best for
Springerle and other moulded picture cookies, very thin wafer cookies, any cookie whose whole point is holding a stamped pattern
Prep. Let stamped cookies air-dry uncovered for eight to twenty-four hours before baking so the pattern sets.
Worth taking seriously, and for one type of cookie it is arguably the best answer available. A moulded cookie such as Springerle or a carved Model cookie is stamped with a design and then left uncovered to dry for many hours before baking, and its structure comes mainly from long-beaten egg and sugar. Adding a leavener that puffs enthusiastically is what blurs the pattern. Omitting it altogether gives you a hard, dense, very crisp cookie that holds every detail of the mould, which is what those cookies traditionally were and why they keep for months. The honest downsides: it is harder and more tooth-testing, so it is meant to be eaten with coffee or after a few days of softening in a tin with an apple slice, and it will not work for any cookie that is supposed to rise, such as a soft Lebkuchen. Do not omit the leavener from a dough that is supposed to spread and puff.

What is Baker's Ammonia?

Baker's Ammonia is Baker's ammonia is food-grade ammonium bicarbonate, an old-fashioned chemical leavener sold as hartshorn, hartshorn salt or Hirschhornsalz, which breaks down entirely into gas and water vapour in the oven and so leaves no residue at all in the finished cookie.

Cooking tips

Baker's ammonia belongs in thin, dry, crisp bakes and nothing else. It works by breaking down into ammonia gas, carbon dioxide and water, all of which need to escape during baking. In a thin Spekulatius, Springerle or wafer they escape completely and leave nothing behind, which is the whole trick. In a thick soft cake or a chewy cookie the ammonia dissolves back into the moisture and stays there, and you get a bake that smells of window cleaner. If your recipe is a cake or a moist muffin and calls for hartshorn, check the translation, because it almost certainly should not.
Crush it and dissolve it before it goes anywhere near the flour. Baker's ammonia comes as hard lumps or coarse crystals that dissolve poorly, and an undissolved lump bakes into a bitter, sharply ammoniated spot. Grind it to a powder in a mortar or crush it under a rolling pin, then stir it into a tablespoon of cold water, milk or the recipe's egg and let it dissolve fully before mixing.
The smell during mixing and baking is normal and it is not a sign that you have ruined anything. Raw dough made with hartshorn smells strongly and unpleasantly of ammonia, and your kitchen will smell of it while the trays are in the oven. Open a window, do not lean over the oven door or the mixing bowl, and never taste the raw dough. Once thin cookies are fully baked and completely cool, the smell is gone.
Store it in a tightly sealed glass jar away from other food. Ammonium bicarbonate slowly turns into gas at room temperature, so a loosely closed packet loses its power over a year or two and, worse, perfumes everything in the cupboard with ammonia. A small screw-top jar in a cool cupboard keeps it usable for years.
Buy only food-grade baker's ammonia. It is sold by baking suppliers, German and Scandinavian delis, and pharmacies in some countries under the name hartshorn or Hirschhornsalz. Household ammonia cleaning solution and pharmacy smelling salts are not food ingredients and must never go into baking; if you cannot find the food-grade product, use one of the substitutes above instead.

Frequently asked questions

What does baker's ammonia actually do that baking powder does not?

It disappears. All chemical leaveners work by releasing carbon dioxide into the dough, which is what makes cookies rise and spread. The difference is what is left over afterwards. Baking powder and baking soda leave mineral salts behind in the crumb, and those salts hold on to a small amount of moisture and slightly soften the cookie. Ammonium bicarbonate breaks down entirely into ammonia gas, carbon dioxide and water vapour, and all three leave the cookie in the oven, so there is no residue, no salty or metallic aftertaste, and nothing to keep moisture in. That is why traditional recipes for thin Spekulatius, Springerle and crisp Lebkuchen ask for it: it produces a drier, more brittle, longer-keeping snap than anything else can.

Will my cookies taste like ammonia?

Not if they are thin and fully baked, which is the only kind of bake it belongs in. The gas needs a short path out, and in a cookie a few millimetres thick it is entirely gone by the time the cookie cools. Where people run into trouble is using it in something thick, soft or cakey, or pulling the cookies out slightly underbaked, or tasting the raw dough, which smells and tastes genuinely awful. If you have made a batch that still smells of ammonia when cool, they were too thick or underbaked, and there is no way to fix them after the fact.

Can I just leave the baker's ammonia out?

For a stamped or moulded cookie such as Springerle, yes, and many traditional recipes contain no leavener at all: you will get a harder, denser cookie that holds the pattern more sharply and keeps for months, which is arguably the more authentic result. For a cookie that is supposed to spread thin and go snappy, such as Spekulatius or a rolled Lebkuchen, leaving it out gives you something noticeably tough, pale and flat with a compact bite rather than a porous one. In that case use an equal volume of baking powder rather than nothing.

How much baking powder replaces baker's ammonia?

Start with the same volume: one teaspoon of baker's ammonia for one teaspoon of baking powder. Treat that as a sensible starting point rather than a precise conversion, because the two work in genuinely different ways and no ratio makes them identical. If the dough contains honey, molasses, dark sugar or cocoa, you will get closer using half the volume in baking soda instead, since that reproduces the wide spread and deep browning. Whichever you use, roll the dough slightly thinner and bake a little longer at a slightly lower temperature to dry the cookies out, because that is where the missing crispness comes from.

Is hartshorn the same as baker's ammonia, and is it made from deer antlers?

Hartshorn, hartshorn salt and the German Hirschhornsalz all refer to the same thing you buy today, which is manufactured food-grade ammonium bicarbonate. The names are historical: the ingredient was originally obtained by heating deer antlers and bone, which is where hart's horn comes from. Nothing sold now is made that way. If a translated German or Scandinavian recipe calls for Hirschhornsalz, hjortetakssalt or hartshorn, ammonium bicarbonate from a baking supplier is exactly what it means.

Related substitutes

More baking substitutes

Baker's Ammonia substitute

Other baker's ammonia substitutes

2Baking soda, in a dough that already contains acid

3Potash (Pottasche, potassium carbonate)

4Baking powder plus a pinch of baking soda

5Leave the leavener out entirely